#AND WERE DONE

[mediumgayitalian]

part two

———

Getting outrun for seven miles by an eight year old is a uniquely humbling experience. Compactly humiliating, coincidentally, is being outrun by an eight year old while dragging along a bouquet large enough that it cannot be adequately contained with two hands and must therefore be carried between two people.

Lee is having something of an afternoon.

“It starts in seven minutes!” shouts Will, at least twelve solid yards ahead of them and running backwards. He does not appear even to be sweating. “Hurry!”

“Could not be hurrying more if I tried,” Lee wheezes.

(It’s not that Lee isn’t a good runner. He is. It’s that Will is freakishly fast, because he has dimples when he smiles and has endeared himself to the dryads, who have been teaching him how to sprint like the hopped up little Energizer Bunny he is. Michael has been calling him Soda Boy for ages, on account of how he so closely resembles a can of pop that has been vigorously shaken, which he hates. Remembering it brings Lee some peace.)

“Let’s go let’s go let’s go!”

Clamping his mouth shut in a desperate attempt to preserve energy, Lee surges forward. Michael matches him, having to run significantly faster to keep up with his long legs. Their panting forms a discordant melody of despair. Poetic.

When they stumble through the door, chests heaving, Lee considers collapsing to the ground and weeping for joy. He will never run again. If a monster chases him, he will simply fight or accept his fate. He has reached his quota.

But, for perhaps the first time in his life, there is no time for dramatics. The lobby is devoid of the massive crowds it held earlier, shadows eerie in their absence, and only the final tail end of a line shuffles through the stage doors.

Despite his internal vow, Lee sprints forward to catch up with them.

“Hold it,” says a man in a venue volunteer! vest, holding up a hand. He glances at them, resting his gaze on Will’s messy hair, Michael’s scuffed shoes, Lee’s wrinkled shirt, and pausing for quite a while on the giant bouquet. The narrowed eyes and thinned lips are familiar. Lee stiffens.

“Go on in,” the man says to the middle aged couple in front of them, who’s crease-free jackets read ‘Dance Mom’ and ‘Prop Team Dad’ respectively. He shoos them inside, complimenting the honest-to-Apollo corsage in the woman’s hand, chortling along to the man’s joke. The laughter drops from his face the second the couple is guided through the doors, and the man turns back to the three of them.

“The show,” he says, nose upturned, “has begun. I can’t let anyone else in lest they cause any…disturbances.”

“The show starts on three minutes and forty-seven seconds!” Will protests, sticking his watch in the man’s face. Completely oblivious to his murderous look, he continues, “Forty-six seconds! Forty-five! Time’s-a-tickin’, let us in!”

The man bares his teeth in a smile. “Regrettably, you are too late. You’ll have to wait for the intermission.”

Will blinks at him. He looks at Lee, at the doors, then back at the man.

“But…we’re on time. And if we come back later, we’ll miss my sister’s dance!”

The man shrugs. “This will be a valuable lesson, then.” He purses his lips, glancing again at the bouquet. “Perhaps be more prepared, next time.”

Will turns back to Lee and Michael, crestfallen. He swipes quickly under his eyes, squeezing his thumb into fists, but the tears well up anyway. “We’re going to miss it?”

Michael snarls. In one quick move he shoves the massive bouquet entirely into Lee’s arms, yanks Will by the shoulders to stand behind him, and gets right in the man’s face.

“You listen here, you slimy ratbag, you had no fuckin’ trouble letting those last scragglers in so you better clean up your act quick before I —”

A loud crashing noise makes them all jump, interrupting him. Nearly crushing the flowers, Lee whips towards the source of the sound. One of the competition banners has been yanked down, metal frame collapsing on the tile floor. Fastening screws rattle to a slow stop beside it.

“What the —”

Another banner crashes to the floor. This time, the little hands that tore it down are a touch too slow to dart away, a blonde head not quick enough to duck behind a corner.

“Hey!” the man shouts. Shoving Michael aside, and moving quicker than Lee can think to stop him, he sprints towards the corner Will disappeared behind. “Get back here! You can’t do that!”

Lee curses, trying to manoeuvre the flowers to see and run at the same time. Michael runs ahead of him, on the man’s heels, chanting shit shit shit shit under his breath. Lee’s brain takes the initiative to alternate, chanting fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck every time he takes a breath.

They’re going to get kicked out for sure. Diana is going to kill them and it’s going to be justified, because Lee is going to have to live with the noble look he knows Cass will have on when she realises they’re not there to watch. The shakey, practiced smile she’ll slap over the disappointment in her dark eyes.

Shit shit shit shit indeed.

“Lee! Michael! Over here!” whispers a voice. Lee whirls around to face it — boy does he ever feel like a puppet on a stick right now — and, for the second time in as many minutes, feels his head pound at the disorienting frenzy of emotions that bubble up when he sees his baby brother’s face. Will stands half inside a doorway Lee hadn’t noticed on the way in, tucked in the shadow of a corner.

He is fast, holy shit.

“What the hell are you doing,” hisses Michael.

“Getting us inside! Hurry up!”

Lee doesn’t need further prompting, clock ticking in his brain. Gods, how long do they have left? Thirty seconds? Less?

“Most big theatres have sideline entrances,” Will explains after Michael helps shove the giant bouquet through the tiny door. He guides them, upright to their hunching, down a tight corridor. “They’re for performers to pop up in the audience without being seen. Mama and I race each other to find ‘em when she did shows.”

Lee had forgotten, for a moment, how much of his life Will has spent in and out of theatres, bars, stages. Naomi Solace has been growing more and more famous since…half of his life, at least. Lee remembers hearing about her four years ago, when she’d done a smaller show in Queens. A friend of his had gone.

Michael reaches out and tugs the mostly-undone ponytail he’d wrestled Will’s hair into that morning. “Good job, kid.”

He grins over his shoulder. “Thanks.”

They stumble into the darkened audience in the nick of time. The second Lee steps out of the cramped little corridor, dragging the stupid flowers (he is, in fact, regretting his choices at this point in time; when he has a free moment he will add this to the list of reasons he will be kicking his past self’s ass if the Hephaestus cabin successfully recreates DeLorean time machine) along with him, the stage lights come on. An announcer’s voice calls out, “Entry 109, Competitive Open Solo: Cass Hasapi.”

“Fuck,” Michael mutters. A quaint family of four gasps. He sneers at them. “Fuck, you see Diana?”

“No, is she maybe —”

“I think that’s her hair —”

“That person is way too tall, what are you —”

“I swear to the gods, I am going to kill you both,” whispers a beautifully familiar voice, and then Lee is being dragged. “Sit the hell down and shut the hell up. Will, baby, c’mere.”

Will climbs happily over the two empty seats, settling onto Diana’s lap and curling under her chin. He sticks his tongue out when Lee and Michael follow in behind him, struggling with the bouquet, muttering about favouritism.

“I’ve literally known you for six times longer than you’ve known him,” Michael mutters, sticking his tongue out right back. A grandmother with a severe bob whirls back and hushes him.

“Yeah, I’ve had all that time to get tired of your bullshit. Shut up.”

Before Michael can retort — Lee is sure he has an eloquent and devastating response, Lee has been helping him practice — soft piano drifts out from the speakers. A light turns on, pointed at the stage.

All four of them snap their mouths shut.

In the centre of the stage, Cass stands, poised. Her back is turned to the audience, arms extended above her and tilted to the right, as if reaching for the setting sun. Her hair, braided loosely back, brushes the edge of her thickly draping purple costume. Her knees are bent and locked and one bare foot sticks out like she’s trying to balance herself, like she’s mid fall.

A gravelly, male voice sings lowly along to the piano. How do you know which time might be the last? She moves along the dip of his voice, dragging her limbs through the rigid air. What I would give just to see you again? She moves with a swooping twist of her heels, twisting at the waist. Under the heat of the stage lights, her face contorts, forehead deeply wrinkled, mouth parted, breathing quickly. I’d walk to the depths of a world down below and demand to get back what some circumstance stole. She holds herself with such tension that Lee finds his own shoulders hiking up to his ears. Her chest moves rapidly, hands shaking, knees buckling. His breath goes stale in his lungs.

When the chorus starts, hard and heavy and sudden, I turned back one last time just to prove you were there, Cass hits the floor. He gasps with the rest of the audience, clutching the plush armrest, but it’s intentional, part of the dance. ‘Cause the last ray of sun made Eurydice cold. Collapsed on the floor, limbs bent, dress askew, she crawls, begging, towards the audience. Did she know? Did she know? Did she know? Did she know?

Cass does not move gracefully. She moves like a beached, gasping siren dragging herself back to the depths, like someone climbing out of a pit. Every movement looks heavy and painful. She looks at the audience and Lee is surging forward before he can stop himself, breath hitching, brain screaming: help her! help her! help her!

If I knew how it’d feel back then, I wouldn’t take another step.

Her body twists again, hair escaping her loose braid and sticking to her neck, her forehead. She claws at her throat like she’s suffocating, eyes accusing everyone watching like they’re holding her under. Each movement of her arms swell and sway on the beat, bare feet slapping the ground with every hit of the kettle drum. If you can see me it’s all in your head, but it feels real to me now, it felt real to me then.

Everything ends.

The piano fades out, the drums hit their last beat. All that’s left is the wretched guitar, taught like strings snapping, taught like the tense pull of her suspended muscles.

But I opened the door and went down the stairs; I turned back one last time to prove you were there.

As the last word fades, she drops. Not slowly, not evenly, but like whatever was holding her up crumbled to dust. Like she was shot. Her purple dress pools out around her like dark Hyacinth. She lays completely, entirely still.

The lights cut. The air in the audience goes heavy.

They come back on and no one says a word. Lee realises, as it drips onto his hands, that he is crying. Diana is, too, tear tracks too fresh to dry on her face, and Will is leaned forward so far he sways precariously. Michael’s hands are pressed harshly to his eyes.

Trancelike, Lee stands. All eyes snap, abruptly, towards him, but he ignores them. He looks straight across the rows of chairs and locks eyes with his sister, upright now, heaving, standing hesitant. She looks at him, and then beside him at Michael, and then at Will in Diana’s lap. They scramble quickly up next to him, and without any of them saying anything, they begin to cheer.

Cass’s face lights up.

With permission, much of the audience claps. No one stands as they do and as they continue hooting and hollering the claps fade quickly, replaced with stares and murmurs, but Cass still stands there, beaming, looking away and looking back like she can’t believe they’re there. That someone is there, that someone watched her, her, from beginning to end. A hand tugs on his sleeve.

“Can I sonic?” Will asks, raising his voice to be heard.

“Level four,” Lee allows.

He needs no further permission, grinning. He lets out a piercing whistle that makes everyone around them shout in alarm and Lee’s ears ring. But Cass laughs, loud and bright, so it’s worth it, and when Will looks at him in question he nods. The second whistle is definitely beyond a level four, but Lee doesn’t care. Cass looks the happiest he’s seen in a long time.

———

None of them care too much about staying for the other performances. But Cass has two more dances with her studio classes, spread out as they are, so Lee remains doomed to two hours of an aching ass and performances that come nowhere near Cass’s masterpiece. Will seems intrigued, though, by some of the pieces, so he grits his teeth and bares it. Besides, the rolled eyes he shares with Diana and Michael every time someone does something exceedingly cliche or tries and fails at depth (someone, often, being one of Cass’s teammates, shocker) makes it somewhat worth it.

By the time the judges call the last entry, though, Lee is ready to book it out of there.

The lights come back on and pop music plays through the speakers as dancers, in track suits over their costumes, congregate on the stage. Lee stands and stretches, letting Will stand on his shoulders and jump off into Michael’s arms to get some of his energy out. (And, also, ‘cause tossing a small child between them is fun. Diana jogs into the aisle so they can throw farther, but they all decide against it when a security guard glances over.)

After what feels like eight million years, the judges finally lumber over to the stage. The building voices hush as they climb the steps, standing in front of the gathered studios with cabled mics and stacks of foreboding envelopes.

“Welcome, dancers and families,” starts one judge.

She blabs on for several minutes about what an honour it was to judge and how wonderful everyone was. Blah, blah, blah. Lee spaces out about the time Diana’s eyes glaze over, and he looks instead to the gathered stage, observing. There are five different studios that he can see, each with about forty to fifty dancers. Mostly young women. They sit tangled together, legs on legs, arms around shoulders, feet tucked under thighs. Cass, he notices, sits on her own, at the very back of the stage. She sits straight-backed and proud, though. Chin lifted, braid resting over her shoulder.

Impossible to miss.

Two of her group dances win Diamond (Diana explains to them that this is Very Good. She thinks). Most others do not get this honour. Lee notices especially the older couple to their left looking quite sour. The glee he feels is indescribable.

“The winner for our open solo, for all age groups, was actually unanimous. It’s been a while since that happened!”

A girl near the front of the stage, who Lee recognises as the one to make a cruel joke about Cass’ mother, preens. Her solo was boring as hell. He’s not sure what she’s so smug about.

“With a score of 97.6, congratulations to Entry 109, Cass Hasapi!”

The four of them scream like lunatics.

They don’t even wait for scattered applause. Each one of them clambers up on the pristine chairs, covering them with scuff marks, and yell at the top of their lungs, jumping and cheering like chimps in a cage. Cass goes red, but she can’t hide her smile as she stands and accepts her award, grinning over at them. Michael holds up his camera and snaps a photo of her, pink-cheeked and wild-haired, glowing.

———

“Cass!”

Will sees her before the rest of them, sprinting towards the changeroom doors at top speeds and leaping up into her arms. She catches him easily, spinning them both around, pressing a thousand kisses to his hair and face.

“Hello, my darling! Hello hello hello!” Every word is punctuations with a kiss, or rather a press of her wide smile to anywhere she can reach. In seconds his cheeks are stained with her lipstick. “Oh, it has been weeks, darling boy, I missed you!”

Will clings to her sweater, face buried in the crook of her neck. She holds him just as tightly.

(Will has seen Cass more than Lee, in the past few months. He knows she’s made a few sudden trips to camp. But he also knows that she was the first one to welcome him into camp, the day his mother dropped him off, and when he was claimed she was the first to bring him home. She loves to tote him around, too, to have him trail after her for cabin inspections, holding the clipboard, or paint his nails when she’s bored. He misses her something fierce in the winters. She holds on tightly when she comes back home.)

Squeezing him one last time, she turns to the rest of them. Despite her wide smile, her mascara runs.

“You came,” she says, voice wobbling.

Michael clears his throat. “No shit.”

His voice wobbles, too.

“Come here, you goober.”

He’s the next to cling to her, inserting himself under her arm. She presses a kiss to his temple and he pinches her ribs, complaining, getting louder when she digs a knuckle into his hair. Diana jogs up and separates them, as she always does, flicking Michael on the forehead and pressing a kiss to her sister’s cheek.

“I’m so proud of you,” she whispers, squeezing her hand.

Cass’s tears spill over again. “Thank you.”

Lee clears his throat. He feels, suddenly, like a doofus, holding a bouquet of flowers the size of him, but Cass looks at them and grins again, chuckling.

“You sell your kidney for that or what?”

Lee snorts. “No, we exchanged Will. This is a clone.”

“Did not!”

Lee blows a raspberry. “Did too. Clone.”

“I’m not a clone! I’m me!”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Ya-huh!”

“Alright,” Cass interrupts, rolling her eyes fondly. She kisses the tip of Will’s nose again and sets him down, turning towards Lee, hands outstretched dramatically. “Hand me my dues.”

Because she is, at the core of her, a true daughter of Apollo, even though the amount of poise and grace that bleeds from her at any given time contradicts almost directly with the guy who beams Pocketful of Sunshine directly into their brains at five in the morning every single day without fail, she kneels with a flourish. Because Lee is, at the core of him, also a child of Apollo, he goes unquestioningly along with the bit, pulling out one of the flowers to knight her before resting the entire bouquet in her arms. She has to hold it with both hands.

“You guys are ridiculous,” she says, grinning.

“They are ridiculous,” Diana stresses. “Dumbasses were damn near late getting this for you. They already had flowers, mind you. They’re just dumb.”

Will holds up his hand with his watch. “I kept us from being late!”

Diana squishes his cheek. “Thank you, sweetpea. You’re already smarter than your brothers combined.”

“Stick out your tongue again and I’ll grab it, you little snitch,” Lee warns.

Will, darting to hide behind Diana, does not heed his warning. Because he’s a little shit. bc

The walk out of the building in a gaggle of movement. As other dancers and their families walk by, glowering at Cass’ flowers and at Cass in general, Lee makes a point to catch their eyes. To smirk. To let them know, without saying a word — you were wrong. Of course you were wrong. Look at how she’s better than your bitter ass without even trying.

It warms him inside, truly.

“I’m thinking,” Diana says, walking back to the car, “that we stop at Dairy Queen on the way home. On Michael’s dollar. Will, look real excited so Michael can’t say no.”

“I am excited,” Will says, turning to face him, “so that’s real easy.”

Michael sighs. He taps his foot on the pavement, glaring. He sighs again. “You’re getting s plain cone and that’s that. You understand me?”

Will takes that as code for ‘begin negotiating’. Diana joins him, the two of them chasing Michael to the car, yelling about Blizzards and sundaes. Cass falls into step next to Lee, adjusting the flowers.

“So,” she says, shooting him a small smile.

“So,” he intones.

“Diana told me you snuck the boys out of camp.”

“…Yes.”

“Organised the whole trip, basically.”

“It wasn’t hard. I just told Michael to pack his shit and he listened, for once. So.”

“Lee.” She waits for him to open the trunk, letting him stuff the ridiculous flowers inside before facing him, grabbing his hands and squeezing. “Thank you.”

“I don’t —”

He swallows past the lump in his throat. How can he say it? How can he tell her about being fourteen and older than half the unclaimed kids in Hermes, still reeling over camp as a whole, and the fear that had dissipated from his chest when she stood in front of camp and said, firmly, he’s ours? About the hours she spent listening to him ramble about Pokémon, learning the game for him, mailing him cards she finds around? About the letters she sends him every week without fail, even though she’s swamped with her own shit, because she remembers the night he cried, months and years of being weird and lonely and unlike anyone else he knew? How can he explain the bubbling in his chest, the ache for her, because of her?

“Of course, Cass.”

She opens her arms and he falls into them, forehead on her shoulder, arms tight around her waist. She grips around his back, pressing a kiss to his hair. His throat is dry, choking back the thickness of his tears.

“I love you.”

“Love you too, Lee.”

[sombritas-des]

hostless -Driftcells-

Im stuck on an neverending line to vote....so i wrote

----------------

Days at the guardian base always feels odd, the sounds in the now host less house are always unwelcome or at least in the thoughts of the beheaded. Nonetheless it's now a safe shelter for him and the currently injured drifter who's fighting in annoyance with his tiny droid.

Both got ambushed by those bird like people, it would have been an easy fight but drifter got caught in his sickness as his body demanded for rest, leaving the beheaded on a fight and on caring duty of the now coughing drifter.

They arrived safe to the base although the drifter seems weaker, coughing frequently as the droid seems more alarmed than usual, the beheaded feels just like it, uneasy.

-" If thoughts can kill, you'll got me faster than this "- the drifter spoke his voice roughly while turning with a soft smile, a now dry trail of blood still marking one of his cheeks, The beheaded turns as his shoulders drop on a way to calm his nerves.

- " you're getting worse "- the beheaded hand ended on trembling as he sits by the side of the drifter

-"it's alright...it's just a bad time.." - said drifter as his hand gently goes to rest on the beheaded's, a calm and reassuring gesture they both get to agree on

As if something flashed in the beheaded core his light flicker then his posture stiffen - "would you be willing to-" - his hand stop gesturing as he "covered" where his mouth would be,then made a soft "never mind" gesture as his hand drop in his lap.

The drifter tilted his head to look at the beheaded, it's always a cute sight,the beheaded thought, if it wasn't for the still remnants of the dry blood that anchors the matter.

-" willing to do what?"- his eyebrows knot just framing the now pierce stare the drifter gives.

At sight the beheaded stiffs , left hand fidgeting as the right is trapped under drifters grasp, the flame burning lower as in shame, after a moment of tension the beheaded deflates, turning defeated to the drifter stare.

-"would you be willing to be"- the beheaded hands pause as if to re-think -" like me?"- his hands move slow as his mind still makes up for his thoughts, the flame turning to look at the now baffled drifter.

Drifter was right, if thought could kill both of them would be dead at this point.

The drifter shakes his head as to leave the trance he is in - "would that even be possible?, you don't even remember how you got to…this"- there's a slight annoyance in drifters voice - "last time I asked you told me you're for- "- the tone was getting elevated as the drifter coughs begun a new more violent than before as if to endure the tone the conversation was escalating.

The beheaded quickly moved to support the drifter's back as sometimes the coughing gets violet enough to hurt more than his lungs,the beheaded kept the drifter close while his body shakes with every cough,once he was stable enough the beheaded continued.

-" what if I find a way, go back then force him to make it, there has to be a way, I can save you ...let me save you.."- the beheaded seemed to sigh with the last gesture, the tired eyes of the drifter now on his flaring spot.

-" what if we're late..."- the drifter voice sounds low and almost gone as his body moves to lean on the beheaded ,his hands snake around the beheaded torsos as his forehead rests just under his scarf - "what if you go....and I'm no longer here"- his voice cracks at the mere though.

The beheaded leans to embrace the drifter as if covering him with his body would do something to protect him, his hand now gently tracing words on the drifter's back -" I won't leave…I promise"- with that the drifter tightens his grip as his body begins to tremble, his face buries in the beheaded scarf.

A soft nod is all the drifter did as the beheaded stayed in the embrace, his calluses hands doing soft patterns on the drifters back while the coughing stops,the drifter breathing returns to a steady and calm pace , non of them dares to move as if moving or parting will break the peace they now have.

The now hostless house is filled with other sounds, a worried drone that flies by, the cracking sound of a cozy fire and the thim sound of a worked breathing.

its somehow unwelcoming still, but not only that but familiar and homelike.

[lazarish]

- FIN -

[leupagus]

It's worth noting that there are some extraordinary people in the world who have been quietly doing the work for decades, and they should be celebrated with all the fervor that we denounce the villains. I first read about Harrison twenty-odd years ago, when he'd already been doing this for about fifty years, and this is one of those guys whose life can, indeed, be summed up by his headline.

James Harrison saved millions of lives. Millions. Not with anything flashy or dramatic, not with profound speeches or brilliant strategy or any of the things we insist are the ways to impact the world. He simply kept himself as healthy as possible so that every few weeks he could go and sit quietly in a room and give away a fundamental part of himself — quite literally his lifeblood — to people he'd never meet, for no pay and no expectation of acknowledgement. (He was, it should be said, acknowledged quite a lot per this article, but that's beside the point.)

When we talk about the kind of people we want to elevate and celebrate in our societies, I often think of people like James Harrison. I hope we get more of him; not just for his blood, but for his heart.

[sapphicathenas]

anyone else thinking about effie spending 24 years watching haymitch completely fall apart. effie, who met haymitch by accident, who knows exactly what kind of person he is, who sees him every year on his birthday for 24 years and each year he’s drunker, each year he’s angrier, each year he’s faster to give up. and then they get katniss and peeta. peeta, who is kind and open and understanding, who refuses to give up on haymitch. and katniss, who is so much like haymitch at 16 that it hurts. and over the few days they’re together, effie watches haymitch come back to life. watches him try. watches him have hope. and then they get to keep not one but both of those kids. they get to come home. and then, less then a year later, effie pulls haymitch’s name at the reaping.

[hardylettuce]

It's really funny that Noelle's mom is so over-protective in every other area of her life, but gives her 100% unmonitored internet access. She thought Noelle couldn't handle being in the rain too long, meanwhile her daughter's fighting for her life on the internet as she stumbles into every single creepypasta, all of which are real and trying to kill her.

[queeraang]

fascinating thing about sinners is how absolutely doomed the narrative is.

like okay if sammie hadn't gone to the juke joint, remmick probably wouldn't have shown up. but then the klan would have. okay smoke took those assholes out solo, if it was him and stack maybe they could have handled it. well the juke joint would have shut down in a month because no one had any real fucking money because of the sharecropping scrip. not to mention two seperate mobs are on their way to fuck the twins up (what do you MEAN you robbed al capone??). okay maybe they covered their tracks, well they're still in the fucking jim crow south and stack and mary have a cool 35 years until loving v virginia so best case scenario is he's broke and watching the love of his life from afar until he's 70. plus annie implied the twins were on borrowed time anyway since she'd been quietly protecting them the whole time they were gone.

idk it both adds to the horror that there was no way out and just solidifies sammie saying it was the best day of his life, like that one little perfect moment was all they were going to get anyway

[abandoned-quiche]

I LOVE ALL OF THESE CHARACTERS BTW. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE YOUR HATE FOR THEM ON MY POST

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

hero/villain showdown but one of them has a spontaneous medical emergency and the battle gets put on hold while their archnemesis drives them to Urgent Care

[slavhew]

dandadorks

[chloesimaginationthings]

Nightmare critters REAL introduction in poppy playtime

[sabellart]

1/3 femnatural !! Sam(antha) Winchester’s up first

[sheepwater]

based off of this post from @holyhaeresis !

[gorgynei]

black boxers that say werewolf on the waistband are the best ever. to me

edit: hi hello no this is not picture i painted it

[nicktoonsunite]

manny discovers something mildly disappointing about jenny

[kuuhaiyu]

i really can't emphasize how heartbreaking it is that the recent harassment campaign against @/90-ghost (among others; see: 1, 2, 3) has led to well-meaning people telling others not to listen to him. he is one of the most visible survivors of the genocide here on tumblr. his entire journey of escape is so well documented! and yet, it only took a few people confidently pointing fingers to create an entire witch hunt accusing him and other palestinians of being disreputable scammers and liars.

i can't help but feel like the reason why people were SO eager to believe those accusations, is because it was uncomfortable to see posts from palestinians every day asking for our time, attention, money, and support; so when someone presented the perfect excuse to ignore all those posts and asks while also taking the high ground, people just LEAPED onto it. they wanted to believe it, because it would be more comfortable.

honestly, i understand feeling overwhelmed by bad news, by the number of asks and messages in your inbox, and so on and so forth. i understand needing to set boundaries for yourself so you don't get burned out. i think this is really when you have to have a set of principles to fall back on, even when you're tired, uncomfortable, angry, and/or sad. so here's the one i suggest, which has been working for me best: don't make your discomfort with this situation into someone else's problem, and for god's sake don't make it a public problem.

if you hate seeing fundraiser posts or news about gaza, i can't emphasize this enough, JUST MOVE ON. KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND SCROLL PAST! all you have to do is absolutely nothing. which is what you were doing anyway, so it shouldn't be hard. if you don't have the heart to read, or reblog, or share, or donate, or support in other ways, at the very least, don't obstruct the efforts of people who ARE trying to make a difference. this is, quite literally, the least you can do.